


Dear Astronomer

by GoodeyeCyborg



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodeyeCyborg/pseuds/GoodeyeCyborg
Summary: Reupload of an old fic.Just Sigma having a Bad Time before being found by Talon.
Kudos: 11





	Dear Astronomer

There were many parts of solitary that he hated. It was lonely, for starters. Not that he wanted to talk to his fellow patients, nor could he. Keeping focus like that was rather difficult at time and he found his mind wandering miles away from the conversation. It was rude, and he really did hate to be rude. Before the incident and his incarceration here, he had been polite and composed. He’d been well respected and now… Well, now nobody would call him any of those things.   
The one thing he hated more than the loneliness was the silence. The silence allowed the melody to settle over him, to echo around the walls of his mind. The whispers that accompanied the melody came too. They were persistent and violent, and urged him only further away from decency. Always he told them no. Always he begged for silence. Silence was too merciful though, he’d flown too close to the sun on wings of pride and determination and this was his torment. A constant refrain of his own failures accompanied by only his darkest thoughts. He wished that whisper was not his own voice, yet it was. Like the Fates, it sang at the back of his mind, harmonizing with the melody he had once desperately longed to hear. An overwhelming orchestra he could never silence. It would grow unbearably loud at times. He would clap his hands over his ears and scream until he thought his throat might bleed. It didn’t help. The song played on.   
Like the band playing still as the Titanic sank into the sea.   
Above all else though, he hated the dark. The dark played tricks. He would lie on his back and wonder when the pitch blackness above him would swallow him whole. When gravity would completely relent its hold on him and return him to the stars. That was his home now, wasn’t it? Where he truly belonged. Among the stars and the melody. Drifting useless and cold out in the abyss. Would the universe even want him back? He wondered if it regretted the stardust spent on him. He would return some day, but between now and then would be painfully long.   
Was there another home to long for? He wasn’t sure. There was no reason for his loved ones to think he was alive. The incident on the space station had been bad. Even in the plainest of layman’s terms it had been catastrophic. Besides that, how long had he been here? He’d been disappeared and now there was nowhere for him to go. There was nothing for him to hope for. This was the only place he belonged. He often found himself wondering if they mourned for him. It was a path he didn’t dare go down.   
His hands clenched and released again and again.   
Home. Home was a dream. Unreachable to him.   
He was a failed experiment and failed experiments got discarded.  
Perhaps once he was gone they would take him apart and marvel at how he’d even survived. Perhaps in being disassembled he could still be of use.   
Perhaps.   
Everything was just perhaps.   
His mind wandered to what day it was. It felt like a Wednesday. It didn’t matter, it was all dark. It was dark and he was never going to leave. The darkness was his new home. Within it, he had nothing but his own mind to keep him company. He had long since lost track of the days. They had once been measured the same as anyone else. Now though, now there was nothing. The occasional comings and goings of the orderlies were his only indication that it was a new day. They’d come in, twitchy and cautious.   
“Subject Sigma, place your hands on your head please.” They always said. Their hands always rested on the weaponry they’d been allotted for dealing with him. As if something as primitive as a stun baton would be enough to stop him if he truly wanted to hurt them. He would always do as they said and often tried to make conversation. They never reciprocated. He didn’t blame them. He was dangerous. He was the worst kind of monster, they kind that didn’t even know the full extent of his capabilities.   
He hadn’t meant to.   
His eyes squeezed shut against the darkness around him.  
God he really hadn’t meant to!  
The orderly’s shattered ribs poked out of their flesh like a shark’s teeth. The sound that left their throat as gravity crushed every bone in their chest was somewhere between a scream and a wheeze. They’d collapsed to the ground, dead before they’d begun to fall.   
It took a moment before anyone realized what had happened.   
It was a mistake!  
He didn’t mean to!  
He would never! Tears streamed from his eyes as he tried to urge his legs forward. It wasn’t real. Right? It couldn’t be real.   
Then someone started screaming. His eyes left the mangled mess that was once a human. The patient who had been standing beside them shook violently. Their mouth hung open in a wordless shriek.  
He hadn’t meant to do it. He hadn’t! He would never. That’s all he could say. Again and again. They restrained him with practiced ease. Apologies flowed like a river, tumbling clumsily from his lips. He didn’t even know what he’d done. How to make sure it never happened again. He didn’t know!   
Later. Days, weeks, hours, he didn’t know. Time had passed. Someone had come to him, heavily armed and armored. His dazed eyes fell on them. He’d spent so much time crying and couldn’t possibly say what he was crying about. The murder? The loss of himself? The idea of dying alone in the dark? Perhaps it had been all three. They looked like a medieval knight standing before him. A needle was jabbed unceremoniously into his neck. When he woke, he was free of his straight jacket.  
He didn’t know how much time had passed since then. It had to have been at least a week. Sigma pulled his knees to his chest and curled his arms around them. He just wanted to leave. There was no point in being here. He wasn’t going to get better. He just wasn’t. The least they could do was let him leave. He would do the decent thing, of course. He wouldn’t hurt anyone else. Never again. He swore that to himself. He would never hurt another person with the powers he’d been cursed with.   
A deep breath. Maybe he still could do something good. Another deep breath. The pounding of his pulse beat in time with the melody. Should he write something? A warning? An apology? Who would even read it? No. No it was best to do this quietly. Not a word. Nobody cared. He was already dead, right? He pulled one hand away and pressed his palm to his temple.  
He only needed to will it, right? Only needed to focus. Just for a moment. His fingers trembled. Just do it. Its the easiest thing in the world. His jaw clenched. What awaited him after? Bliss? Torment? Mere silence? He prayed for the silence. The whispers urged him on as the melody grew more frantic.   
“Come on…. Come on.” He growled to himself. Urging his powers to work, begging them to let him do this. Just this one thing. Let him return what he’d misused to the universe. Let him atone. Just a second and it would be over. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore the hot tears on his cheeks. The sensation of it grounded him for a second. Just long enough to truly realize the vastness of the unknown which laid before him.   
Fear welled up inside him and choked him. His hand fell away from his head and laid limply at his side. The melody of the abyss always called and yet he could never answer. Death would have offered the quiet he craved. Would have silenced the voice. His mind would have spattered like an inkblot and never again would he need to worry that it had been lost. The frustration that only came from wanting to die and not being able to forced a sob from his throat. It was a course, near feral, sound. He hardly recognized it as his own voice.   
More days would pass. Most were uneventful. His mind would wander, would tell him that he’d missed his chance. That he should have put himself out of everyone else’s misery when he had the chance. He would grit his teeth and tell himself no. He had made the right choice.  
He thought to compose the melody. He tried, and, like so many other things he'd once held dear, he had forgotten how to notate the music. He tried to focus. Tried for days to recall the way notes looked. The graceful way they sloped along the bars. Each measure calculated and mathematically perfect. He could remember a shade of them. Like the memory of a drunken night. It was fuzzy around the edges. The harder he tried, the further the memories got from him. The melody would only ever live within his own mind. It made his heart ache to realize that nobody else would ever hear it.  
Some days, he would be taken to another room. There would be bright lights and leather straps. They scanned his brain and injected him with god only knows what, all while he was restrained in the only straight jacket that would fit him. Sometimes what they gave him hurt. Other times, what they did to him hurt. Until now, he had thought that electroshock was supposed to help, but all it did was hurt. Every time he went for that particular treatment, something would lift off the ground and the doctor would write that down. That was its purpose. They weren’t helping. They were trying to find a way to use him. The worst part was that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.  
He hated this turn of events. Hated the way they talked about him like he couldn’t understand them. His mind had been dulled by the sheer volume of drugs pumped into him at any given moment. That didn't make him any less of a scientist. They kept him docile and quiet, kept him from remembering much. How he had ever wanted to leave solitary was beyond him. Of course they were doing this to him. These sorts of places had always been used for experiments that could only ever be called morally abhorrent. Used for the advancement of a science that hadn’t changed since its inception. He didn’t speak. Why should anyone listen? He couldn’t remember his own name. He was simply, Subject Sigma.  
Eventually they were testing him every day. Restful sleep was a thing of the past. Time became even more of a blurr. It was divided by when he was hurting and when the pain ebbed away. When the drugs kicked in and when they waned away.  
Every day he lost a little more of who he was.   
Subject Sigma.   
His name. His only name.   
He wasn’t a person any more. He was merely an experiment.   
No longer failed. Now ongoing.   
Perhaps he could be himself again.   
It wasn’t likely. He wanted to leave. He wanted to go home. To space to- where was he from again?   
The whispers grew louder by the day. They begged to be released.   
Some day they would be. Some day.   
He laid back, his hands behind his head. He wondered why the blackness above him wasn't littered with stars. Why he was being kept from returning to them. Perhaps returning to the melody would silence it.  
Not yet. He couldn't go back quite yet.


End file.
